The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago today. It brings back memories from when I was there as a young exchange student in 1984. Berlin is a great city and to encounter a wall slicing it in two was startling to behold. Streets and trolley tracks ran right up to it and stopped.
The Soviet-run East Berlin in particular was an intimidating place to visit; the famous warning sign, “You Are Leaving the American Sector;” The gray-uniformed guards with full authorization to shoot to kill; the nearly-empty government-run restaurants and stores; the ever-present propaganda posters; the walls and buildings still pockmarked by bullet holes from the waning days of World War II.
At the time we visited it didn’t seem possible that five years later jubilant crowds would break through this barrier to reunite a city and a nation. Though I did manage one little act of protest by prying out a small piece of the concrete wall as a souvenir. I still have it on my desk.